During the campaign, which put Notre Dame into the Bowl Championship Series National Championship game, Te’o told reporters he’d been inspired by the death from leukemia in September of Lennay Kekua, who he described as his girlfriend.

“This is incredibly embarrassing to talk about, but over an extended period of time, I developed an emotional relationship with a woman I met online,” Te’o said in a statement.

“We maintained what I thought to be an authentic relationship by communicating frequently online and on the phone, and I grew to care deeply about her.

“To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone’s sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating. It further pains me that the grief I felt and the sympathies expressed to me at the time of my grandmother’s death in September were in any way deepened by what I believed to be another significant loss in my life.”

A Sports Illustrated story published in October stated that Kekua died less than 24 hours after the death of Te’o’s grandmother, Annette Santiago, who died on September 11.

But the website Deadspin.com reported on Wednesday that the girlfriend, in fact, apparently never existed.

According to the site, there are no Social Security Administration records confirming that a Lennay Marie Kekua, previously reported to be a 22-year-old Stanford student, actually died — or was ever enrolled at Stanford.